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Well a lot of the time Breaking Bad hasn't been so much surprising in the path forward, more what happens on that path. It's also good story-telling that perhaps the ending wasn't totally surprising given a lot of people were able to piece together what had happened previously to work out what would make the most sense. Despite that, it still delivered on being interesting and suspenseful.

I know, I more meant the details on how things would get done. You know Walt will have to do something somehow, but the magic is watching him do it. I think it was just easier to piece together what was happening. Not in a bad way though.

Simple:An LMD. It is established in the comics that an LMD is able to bleed, to a degree. Think of it like a Terminator. A layer of flesh/fleshlike material with blood over the robotic core. That way they have some give if punched (with the rest being "Damn, that Fury is in good shape. REALLY solid").

Steam: Gundato
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If you want me on either service, I suggest PMing me here first to let me know who you are.

To be honest with all the surprise of Ozymendias and the second to last one so it was probably inevital that the last one was predictable but as I said earl;ier I don't think it was a bad thing, it was satisfying and that's hard to do in a season finale, even one of the greatest shows The Sopranos didn't really do it.

Just on the predictability of the final episode, how much of it did you all actually figure out and how much of it did you gleam from discussing every single detail and possibility about the ending days, weeks, months and even a year in advance? By the time the finale aired almost every possible outcome had been decided so ultimately no matter what happened people where going to say it was predictable.

The one thing that I didn't see any predict or claim to predict was his interaction with the Schwartz's

"Halo is designed to make the player think "I look like that, I am macho sitting in my undies with my xbox""

Can someone tell me whether or not I want to carry on watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine, please? I...I just don't know. It gets a few guffaws out of me, but I don't see any staying power. It's been fairly consistent with the first three episodes, and that's consistent at "Heh, that was slightly amusing." I can't decide if I want to give it time or not. I feel like it should be a lot funnier than it is. Which is the same issue I have with New Girl. This season hasn't started off too well. It's not been bad, but it definitely feels like it's been coasting.

Understand something about Breaking Bad - it's not just that it's a completely novel premise which is brilliantly drawn-out, it's not just that the characters are detailed and developed with amazing depth, it's the fact the show is shot fantastically and uses loads of visual and auditory tricks to keep you watching (it's the best shot TV programme ever by a country mile).

We're reaching the end of a golden age of TV now I think - I know this because people have recognised it and that usually means it's just about done!?

The Sopranos began it and the key elements of it would be Deadwood, The Wire (or The Shield - horses for courses), Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

There's loads of other series hovering around in there but those are the programs which did something new/changed the format, took "smart person's drama" out of the cinema and put it on the TV and leveraged the sheer length of a series to actually do more than churn-out 45 min stories.

God knows how long we'll have to wait for the next big thing - and for gods sake watch BB - it's not even as-if knowing the ending would affect your enjoyment of it at all (see also The Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood doesn't even HAVE an end!!)

I would argue the golden age of TV began with Twin Peaks, Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5. Overarching and complex storylines spanning seasons, large ensemble casts and much better acting than other shows at the time.
Then Xena ended and there was much sadness.

If your starting point is flawed, then it is logical to assume that all that proceeds from that point will be tainted in some way. Which is why having the Maquis in Starfleet uniform by the end of the pilot was just one of many ways in which Voyager was doomed to be utterly, relentlessly terrible.

“We wanted to get the Maquis into Starfleet uniforms, with a captain who had to pull together diverse groups of people into a functioning, solid, effective unit. It would get pretty irritating, and cumbersome, to have the Maquis tension in every episode.” - Rick Berman

Gave up watching walking dead in season 2. Just towards the end of the farm, the writers flat out don't give a shit, production values and presentation is excellent. If only it wasn't trying to be a TV series demanding people's revisiting to get eyeballs on adverts and it was a series of mini movies... Actually movies are often worse, addicted to cliff hangers.

Gave up watching walking dead in season 2. Just towards the end of the farm, the writers flat out don't give a shit, production values and presentation is excellent. If only it wasn't trying to be a TV series demanding people's revisiting to get eyeballs on adverts and it was a series of mini movies... Actually movies are often worse, addicted to cliff hangers.

Does anyone else feel like this is slipping into 'Lost' territory?

Having watched all of it to date, yes. Season 3 picked up for about all of 2 episodes and then plummets back down into meh-land. Towards the end there's about another one or two decent episodes. The finale of season 3 has me terrified that season 4 will be season 2 all over again and nothing of the promo material has made me think other wise.

"Halo is designed to make the player think "I look like that, I am macho sitting in my undies with my xbox""

Having watched all of it to date, yes. Season 3 picked up for about all of 2 episodes and then plummets back down into meh-land. Towards the end there's about another one or two decent episodes. The finale of season 3 has me terrified that season 4 will be season 2 all over again and nothing of the promo material has made me think other wise.

Pretty much agreed. The one bright spark is that Scott Gimple, the guy who wrote what were far and away the best two episodes of season 3 (the penultimate episode of the season, and the episode where Michonne gets a personality), is now showrunner for season 4.

The Maquis tension in Voyager existed for Season 1 & 2, but has been completely gone in S3 (watching it now). But most of it was gone by S2 with the only tension left between 2 characters. I think the biggest disappointment which I know is coming is shoehorning in the Borg to help keep interest in the show. I do like the sense of the unknown that was in TOS and TNG and the weird and bizarre stuff that happens, with some episodes start to feel like a TNG episode but they add their own twist to it.

DS9 had a good run of story from S4-6... then half of S7 was random crap until the last handful of episodes were one after another to conclude the series.

Twin Peaks was a massive outlier and a bit of a fluke - it was never intended to be a TV series and the series we got was nothing like what DL set out to make (the film sequel was a bit more like what he intended) - it's fantastic but it's a one-off.

Star Trek's ensemble cast thing has been around since Star Trek started - I'd say that ST remains dedicated to the episode-per-story (or occasionally 2) format to this day tho, I don't see how it took the huge running time of a whole series and played with that at all.

The Sopranos is our golden-age starting point because it broke a lot of rules - it made an essentially 'bad' person the centre of the story and it make no attempt to wrap-up anything per-episode, instead letting multiple plot-strands unravel over whole series or even multiple series. It also pretty-much started the 'binge-watching on DVD' thing single-handedly.

Deadwood took a tired genre and completely re-invented it and again it played on the 'bad people' without having to show them coming to a sticky end (as pretty-much all TV did upto this time).

The Wire is the ultimate in "using the whole series" of course - it was the first TV series to force critics to watch more than 1-2 episodes as a preview, arguing that the series would "make no sense" unless they saw more of it upfront.

The Shield is really the backstop of 'old' Police TV - it takes the sterling work done by Hill Street Blues, Homicide LoTS etc. and polishes it to a gleam but it's still slightly stuck in the older 'wrap stuff up' model for the most part.

Mad Men broke many boundaries in terms of how seemingly underdog characters are actually the centre of attention (Peggy - Joan, Pete and so on) - before it came along it would have been the Don Draper show and it can still be enjoyed that way if you miss it's point (or endure it beyond about Series 3-4ish)

Breaking Bad caps this off - my only real complaint with it is that it goes from making a criminal out of a normal man into making that man a monster - it's a lazy conceit that all criminals MUST be monsters or that crime will make you one. In some ways I might have preferred a more Sopranos-style Breaking Bad whereby Walt continued to be a downtrodden teacher and car-washer whilst dealing with crazy druglords in his spare time - that would have run and run ;)

Less the crime made him a monster, more the crime allowed him to be the monster he wanted to be. When I pick back up with Twin Peaks (I watched the first episode of season 2 and immediately felt like it had dropped off, much to my disappointment. This was a good month plus back, so with BB gone, I might have a nice viewing space) I might replace that with The Sopranos or The Wire (or both). Deadwood is on my list, though a little low down.

I loved Deadwood, it's a strange show in places but the setting is lovely and all the shots at night just look great. Ian McShane is so good as Swearengen, he's up there with Bryan Cranston. It's well worth a watch, it's slow burn, but the politics of the camp and the characters themselves are interesting enough to carry it.

Generation War, a recent German TV drama on East Front in WWII from German's perspective.

Of course you all know the outcome of the war, so this has to be a tragic drama. The story started in 1941 May, some months before invasion to USSR, five good friends met in Berlin, each would go out to meet their destinies in the Great War. In the end, some died and some survived, met again in the rubble over the ruins of occupied Berlin after the end of the war.

Many here comment that this short series is comparable with US productions like Band of Brothers.

The Sopranos is our golden-age starting point because it broke a lot of rules - it made an essentially 'bad' person the centre of the story and it make no attempt to wrap-up anything per-episode, instead letting multiple plot-strands unravel over whole series or even multiple series. It also pretty-much started the 'binge-watching on DVD' thing single-handedly.

Even if we skip the sci-fi stuff like Babylon 5 that did the whole ongoing arc stuff, and discount Murder One because it only really had one season (before changing format and cast for season 2) then the starting point is still surely HBO's Oz, rather than The Sopranos? Given it did all that first.

It was just a bit too early, being pre-social media, it didn't get that buzz that the likes of The Wire and Breaking Bad get now.

Seems a bit too early to call it the end of the age also - we've still got Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones on air, and I wouldn't be surprised if the 'next' Breaking Bad is already showing - with most of these shows no-one paid attention to them until around series 3...